Once Upon A Time...

From a dog and a forest fire to Thursdays, Russia and finally allowing myself to be an author – that could be a short résumé of my becoming-an-author story. Let's move on to the longer one...

Word as My World

Do you remember the first big old computers that were so slow you could easily take a shower while waiting for them to start up? I was six years old when my father brought one home. Despite that lack of speed and little RAM, it was still a miracle. It enabled people to do many useful things. I, however, was only interested in two of them, painting and MS Word.
Especially the second one. Why? Because I could write anything I wanted. Before I entered this marvellous world of Word, I used to annoy my family telling the stories I had in my head, but from that point on I was able to write them down on that computer. It was paradise for me.
Of course they were lousy but I loved them. My first fairytale was about a little dog rescuing a forest from fire. Other animals, his friends, helped him and I still remember how my father didn't want to tell me how to insert a picture of a dog into the text, so I had to figure it out by myself.
It's a pity but I don't have that fairytale anymore.
Instead of that one, I have a lot of other short stories on my much more modern notebook, tons of depressing poems in a red paper notebook and two school exercise books full of essays from primary school. This is how it all started, as a great passion, a way of self expression really.

From Writing “For the Desk Drawer” to Writing Professionally

Communication was it, written words, spoken words, words in different languages but always words. I began to study the German language and teaching at the Masaryk University in the Czech Republic and I was going to become a German teacher. I taught for a while but writing was still more important to me. Later, I met some people who would become important in my life and I discovered the profession of copywriter. I followed it as a career and also established my own company. Years of writing copies and articles for a business magazine passed by. It was fun, sometimes difficult, sometimes very rewarding. However, I felt like I was still missing something.
Until the day when my bosses at the Podnikajte.sk magazine told me that they planned to publish my business ideas series as a book. The series had been published in their magazine every Thursday and was two years old at the time. A classic printed book that would be available in bookstores. I was like... wow. Is this really happening? Yes, I was a writer, a copywriter in demand actually but could it really be possible that I would be a real author? It was something I had always dreamt of but never really allowed myself to believe it could one day become a reality. Not even after my first book had hit the shelves.

All Good Things Come In Threes

My first book titled 99 Inspiring Business Ideas was published when I was already writing another business book. It suddenly came to me naturally, without pushing too hard – one of my long-term clients wanted my help with his memoirs. That's how “Business in Russia” came about. Ladislav, an entrepreneur and business angel, wanted to write down his business story and I helped as co-author. Anyway, I still didn't feel like an author at that time. Maybe writer and memoirist, but not a professional author yet.
Two books had now been published and I also worked as a full time copywriter, when suddenly an idea for a novel came to mind. It was in January 2013 and it took almost a year before I finished the book. Since I started, I was unable to stop. Some of my friends happened to be my first readers and they liked it very much. I was even more surprised when other people, unrelated to me and not close friends, liked it too. Maybe this was the moment that forced me to follow my dreams. I have now finally allowed myself to call myself an author. Although I know I’m still at the very beginning, I am now hell-bent on getting my first fiction novel published. Hopefully in a couple of months I will be writing another blogpost with some great news... wish me luck, please!